Edelstein to Likud Activists: Don't Get Drunk on Polls

Minister of Public Information and Diaspora Affairs, Yuli-Yoel Edelstein warned, Thursday, against overconfidence in the Likud party ahead of the January Knesset elections, based on surveys touting the party's strength. Interviewed by Arutz Sheva's Hebrew service, he said he is often in the company of party activists "and the feeling that we have already won the elections is very problematic and very dangerous. If we go to sleep for three months now and think that [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu has won, 'Likud-Beytenu' will crash and we'll get [Labor party leader] Shelly Yechimovich as prime minister."

Edelstein said rumors about Minister Moshe Kahlon forming his own party would prove to be false, explaining, "I fully hope that he will make the right decision and we won't be witnesses to a splitting of forces on the right." Edelstein also appealed to Netanyahu to tighten controls on Defense Minister Ehud Barak, calling the Thursday-morning destruction of homes in the Samarian (Shomron) Jewish community of Yitzhar and indication that Barak was trying to pick up leftwing votes at the expense of the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria.